Firestone gun range: Strong opposition postpones decision

FIRESTONE -- For a standing-room only audience at Firestone's town hall, Tuesday night was about a tale of two gun ranges.

In version number one, the Second Amendment Firearms Experience gun training center -- planned for 900 acres near Colo. Highway 66 and Weld County Road 17 -- would be a quiet, unobtrusive, respectful neighbor who would muffle gunshots and restore the land.

In version two -- the one pushed by several neighbors -- SAFE's center would be loud, noisy, dangerous and possible even cancer-causing.

The two views didn't allow for much common ground. And they spent more than five hours proving it.

"When I came in here tonight, I was totally 100 percent in favor of the gun range," new gun-owner Suzanne Mock testified. "I'm still for it, but I'm also for the residents of the area that the gun range is in. I'm confused . ... This is not something to be decided on quickly. This is something where everyone just needs to slow down."

"It's as if nothing we've done, nothing we've conceded, nothing we've revised has made any difference," said Ron Abramson, managing partner and chief firearms instructor of SAFE. "It's hard to have a discussion with people who ignore you."

SAFE had hoped to get the Firestone planning commission's blessing at Tuesday night's hearing, before putting its plans and annexation request to the town board next week. But by 11:40 p.m., planners had decided to continue the hearing, and postpone any decision, to the following Tuesday.

About 17 homes sit within one mile of the planned gun center -- far fewer, Abramson noted, than is true for many other area ranges. The Cheyenne Mountain Shooting Complex at Fort Carson has 388 homes within the same radius, he said; the shooting center at Cherry Creek State Park had nearly 1,200 homes within a mile and the Boulder Gun Club around 1,400.

And in contrast to Jeannie Staker of the HomeSmart Realty Group in Centennial, who said home values typically went down 7 to 30 percent when a gun range moved in, Abramson argued that many of these neighborhoods had very high-dollar homes and that trying to predict any effect was speculative.

"Shooting sports are a draw for a large number of people," he said.

Several revisions have been made to the plan since it was made public in December. The outdoor gun ranges in the design have been eliminated after discussions with state and federal wildlife officials. That leaves a few standalone buildings, such as a law-enforcement style "shoot house" and the main 65,000 square-foot covered training area. That main area has also been sited to be farther from an eagle nesting area -- just under half a mile, by the latest plans -- and rotated slightly so that a corner of the building faced the nests, to expose them to less disturbance.

But what Abramson presented as compromise, the neighbors saw as inconsistency. One accused him of being a "shapeshifter," changing positions at every meeting while others said they no longer knew what to expect.

"The problem is, every time he's come here, he's changed his story," said horse trainer Geoff Morris, part of a crowd of over 120 that packed the town hall. "Where I come from, that's cause for mistrust."

"Had we not changed anything, I supposed we would have been accused of standing hard and fast," Abramson said.

SAFE lined up an array of experts to help make its case, including a leading state ecologist, who testified that the range would help restore an "overgrazed" ranch, and Stephen Katz of Troy Acoustics, a veteran Hollywood sound engineer who had shared in an Oscar for his work on Dolby sound. Katz's company now does noise abatement for gun ranges, and has done work for the FBI and the Secret Service.

Katz testified that, in open-air gunshot testing, there were several locations where gunfire wasn't audible at all, including the nearby Grandview Estates development. Those areas where it was audible showed little difference over the existing ambient noise, he said, and the baffling planned by SAFE would reduce that to effectively no difference.

In contrast, Boulder audiologist Sue Carter suggested that "noise is noise" and that no one could be sure what a neighbor's threshold for irritation or annoyance might be.

Even plans by SAFE to use "green ammunition" were challenged. The training center plans to use lead-free frangible rounds that will pulverize themselves on contact with a hard surface; a neighbor argued that many lead-free rounds included tungsten in the mix, which presented a cancer risk.

More than one neighbor said they weren't opposed to guns and even owned firearms themselves -- they just didn't want to see the range at this site, or within Firestone's jurisdiction where they would have no say.

"This is your land use map," neighbor Bruce Wilson said. "Thirty-two different properties are shown in dark blue, light blue or green where there's no development, no schools or businesses. ... let' see if your own residents will buy these arguments."

Abramson noted that he could tell the neighbors weren't against guns -- several times while studying the site, he said, he had heard gunshots from neighboring properties.

"And these were unmitigated shots (shots with no sound baffling)," Abramson said. "I would submit to you that a structured shooting range is a much better use for that than what's occurring now."

The area, known as the Kurtz Ranch, has been on the market since 2009.

Toward the end of the night, four or five people testified in favor of the SAFE Center. (In an ironic nod to the lateness of the proceedings, the last person to speak had the last name Van Winkle.) Gun ranges are few and far between on the Front Range, they said, with five-to-10-year wait lists common.

"I do respect your wishes and your values, but we do need a training facility like this," Lloyd Van Winkle of Frederick told the neighbors. "Anything that draws a customer base the size of this one is going to help the restaurants, the shops, the garages in this area."

"I ride my bike by there," he added. "It's a lot more dangerous being on Highway 66 than a gun range."

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